Cork to get back to winning ways against Antrim

Cork take on Antrim in their second round game of the Centra Camogie League Division 1A tomorrow.

Having lost to Waterford last week the Rebels will be hoping to pick up their first points of the season at MTU, throw-in 2pm.

Nothing less than a Cork win will be expected tomorrow, but with so many changes to the squad, it may not be as straightforward as other years.

Most seasons, it would be a major shock for Antrim to get the better of Cork, and in truth, tomorrow is no different.

It should be a Cork win and another chance for some of the new players to stake their place for a starting spot in the championship side.

Last Saturday, Cork were away to Waterford as they lost by 1-12 to 0-9, but showed enough, particularly in the second half, that there are some quality players coming through.

Only Amy Lee, Libby Coppinger, Ashling Thompson, and Emma Murphy started from the side that lost the All-Ireland final, with some gone and others out through injury or just returning to training.

It’s going to take a bit of time for the new players to get used to the pace and physicality of the senior game, as they saw against the Deise.

Credit to Cork, they upped their game in the second half and were a little unlucky to lose by the margin they did. The goal came against the run of play and effectively killed off any chance of a Cork fightback.

But the likes of Niamh McNabola, Hayley Ryan, Aoife O’Neill, and Isobel Sheehan showed they have plenty to offer Cork this season.

Speaking ahead of tomorrow’s game Cork manager Ger Manley said he won’t be making too many changes for the Antrim tie as he wants to give players more game time.

“We are trying to build and strengthen the squad throughout the league and give players as much game time as possible,” said Manley.

“We will look to give another few that didn’t feature against Waterford some game time against Antrim, but I don’t think we will have too many changes from the side that started against Waterford.

“We will see now players trained during the week before we make a final decision on the starting 15 but we will be looking for an improvement on our display against Waterford tomorrow.”

One change he has made is Eimear Hurley starting in goal. The St Finbarr's player was in Dublin up to last season where she played in goal for their inter-county side and gets her chance to impress tomorrow for her home county as she is now back in Cork. 

Manley also confirmed that a number of players are on the way back from injury and will be expected to feature in the coming weeks, but not tomorrow.

“Laura Hayes, Clodagh Finn, Izzy O’Regan, Saoirse McCarthy, and a few others are all back in training and should be available for selection over the next few weeks, but I don’t expect any of them to feature against Antrim. To be fair to Antrim they were in the game against Tipp last week for a long time but succumbed in the end.

“We won’t be taking their challenge lightly, and we respect all sides, so we know that we will need to perform better than last weekend to ensure we get the win.”

Antrim’s ambitions are a little different as they know they will be up against it in every game but want to use the league to prepare for the intermediate championship in the summer.

“All I can ask of the team is to be competitive and to learn from playing against these teams,” said manager Elaine Dowds.

“We are new to this level, and we don’t yet have the physicality that you see in the top league. I would rather that we are playing at this level and learning from it.

“We will be sharpening up our skills, sharpening up on everything we do. Because we want to be using that experience during the summer when we are competing in the Ulster and the All-Ireland Intermediate championships.”

CORK: E Hurley; M Murphy, L Coppinger, A Egan; A O'Neill, A Thompson, R Harty; M Condon, A Fitzgerald; E Murphy, I Sheehan, O Cremin; H Ryan, N McNabola, C O'Callaghan.